The nameless refuge

They reached the pillar with three bells in the middle of the cycle. The gallery opened into a low, almost round room, whose walls had been polished by generations of passage. The bells were gone. There were only three brackets and an inscription in svirfneblin language, half erased.

Orven read it in silence.

"What does she say? Zaelyra asked.

"That travelers must wait for the answer."

"What if no one answers?"

"So they're still waiting."

"How long?"

"It's not indicated."

The merchant sighed. "We can't stay here until we run out of water."

"We won't stay there," says Orven. "We can wait at the scheduled location, or turn around."

"There is no other choice?"

"There are always other choices. They are not all good."

Nym examined the hooks. They had been torn off recently, but no tool had left a clear mark. Zaelyra approached a lamp. Under the dust, three small notches appeared above the central hook.

"The bells have been removed. The brand is more recent."

Orven passed the nail in one of the notches. "It's the wake signal. A bell should have remained."

"Why remove it?"

"So that no one can call the shelter without knowing the code."

The gallery had two openings. One went down to an underground stream; the other went up, too narrow for the line. Orven confirmed that the shelter was beyond the climb, but that he could not guarantee that it was still occupied.

They sent two scouts to the first elbow, rope tied. They returned without having seen any light or heard a voice. Nym checked the air. The current went up towards the narrow passage, but turned down near the stream.

"Someone may have closed the chimney," he says. "Or the gallery is collapsed higher."

Orven sat against the pillar. He seemed more tired than he had shown so far.

"I grew up in this shelter," he says. "My sister was still living there when I left the area. The bells were used to announce who was coming. One for well-known travelers. Two for the injured. Three for those we didn't want to see enter."

"And you heard three bells? Zaelyra asked.

"No. The engraved sign only says that there were three hooks. I don't know what code they use now."

He doesn't say he hoped to find his sister. He didn't need to say it.

They set up a temporary camp in the room, at a good distance from the two galleries. The travelers made an inventory of water and food. They could wait until the next cycle, maybe a little longer by rationing. Orven advised not to drink from the stream before Nym had tested it.

The guard proposed to ring the hooks with a stone. Orven opposed it.

"If the community is there, they will know that we have come. If it is gone, we have no reason to wake up everything that lives in the ducts."

"Don't you want us to call your sister?" asked the guard.

"I want to know who will hear. It's not the same thing."

Zaelyra asked travelers to choose between waiting, leaving or sending a single messenger to the uppassage. The scout's proposal won, but he would not leave alone. Orven would accompany him to the first elbow, then come back.

Before they got involved, Tazri handed Orven one of the small blue lanterns. "So that you can find the rope."

Orven accepted it. "Thank you."

"Don't say you're coming back if you don't know."

"I won't say it."

He left with the guard and returned less than an hour later. They had not reached the shelter. The passage had narrowed under recent scree, but a breath of hot air came out. They had heard a weak sound, three separate notes.

Orven didn't know if it was a signal or a stone noise.

This time, Nym thought they could check the air movement with a thread stretched from the threshold. The thread vibrated according to an almost regular rhythm. There were not enough clues to conclude. But the last sound was clearer.

"An answer? Zaelyra asked.

"Maybe," says Orven.

The old svirfneblin who was looking for her relatives asked if she could call in turn. She knew a song from her family, she said, but didn't know if the four people she was looking for had heard it.

Orven refused to let her enter the passage. He offered him to sing from the room, only once, then to wait.

She put her hand on the leather hidden in her sleeve and singed three slow notes. His voice trembled on the last one. The gallery offered no echo.

They waited.

After a long time, a fourth note came to them, so weak that it could have been a dropper.

The old svirfneblin straightened up. "They are here."

Orven did not confirm. "Maybe someone is there."

She closed her eyes. "I know."

The answer had given them a possibility, not a family. Zaelyra wrote it in this way.